"The government never does anything successfully"
About this Quote
A line like "The government never does anything successfully" isn’t policy analysis; it’s a political weapon. Badnarik, a libertarian figure best known for running as the Libertarian Party’s 2004 presidential nominee, is aiming for a gut-level verdict that bypasses spreadsheets and goes straight for distrust. The absolutism of “never” is the tell: it’s not meant to be falsifiable, it’s meant to be contagious. If you accept the premise even emotionally, you’ve already moved halfway toward his conclusion that power should be minimized, privatized, or pushed downward.
The intent is to collapse the messy record of public institutions into a single affect: incompetence. That move does two things at once. It absolves markets and private actors from comparative scrutiny (because the standard becomes “government is uniquely hopeless”), and it reframes civic frustration as ideological proof. Long DMV lines, bloated procurement contracts, and headline scandals become not incidental failures but the natural state of the state.
The subtext is less “government can’t” than “government shouldn’t.” It’s a warning against the moral hazard of coercive authority: when an institution can tax, regulate, and compel, its mistakes feel like violations, not mere errors. Context matters here: post-9/11 expansions of federal power, the Iraq War’s mismanagement, and a rising anti-establishment mood made “state failure” a ready-made narrative. The quote works because it flatters the listener’s suspicion, turning everyday irritation into an identity: the clear-eyed citizen vs. the bloated machine.
The intent is to collapse the messy record of public institutions into a single affect: incompetence. That move does two things at once. It absolves markets and private actors from comparative scrutiny (because the standard becomes “government is uniquely hopeless”), and it reframes civic frustration as ideological proof. Long DMV lines, bloated procurement contracts, and headline scandals become not incidental failures but the natural state of the state.
The subtext is less “government can’t” than “government shouldn’t.” It’s a warning against the moral hazard of coercive authority: when an institution can tax, regulate, and compel, its mistakes feel like violations, not mere errors. Context matters here: post-9/11 expansions of federal power, the Iraq War’s mismanagement, and a rising anti-establishment mood made “state failure” a ready-made narrative. The quote works because it flatters the listener’s suspicion, turning everyday irritation into an identity: the clear-eyed citizen vs. the bloated machine.
Quote Details
| Topic | Sarcastic |
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